The Chain Letter/Transcript
WORK IN PROGRESS; NEEDS HUMAN REVIEW You know, I find the toughest part of any job around the house is the clean-up afterwards. Other an the apology to the neighbours and the trip to the police station. But for most men, watering the lawn or taking down the christmas lights is drudgery enough, without having to put everything neatly away when you're done. But then the next time you go to use any of that stuff, there's a problem. I'm thinkin' there's gotta be a better way. Put a few extra rims on this baby. Gave myself 120 horsepower sidewinder. One rim for each item I'm trying to wind up. That way it keeps them all separate, and allows me to clean up any project in two seconds flat. I turned the idle up to about 2200 rpm, that'll give me enough pop to keep the kinks out of the hose. Now all I have to do is reach inside and tap her into gear. Okay. Okay. That's important. Don't use a front-wheel drive vehicle. [ applause ] [ cheers and applause ] [ ♪♪♪ ] thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate that. Big, big week up at the lodge this week. It's the end of the month, that's when the bills come in, you know, the envelopes with the windows in 'em. Or as we call 'em, land fill. Oh, look at this one, eh? Final notice. That's good news. I was afraid they'd never give up. ♪ lala la lalala lalalalalalala lala ♪ [ cheers and applause ] don't do that, harold. Stop it. You know how it worries me when you're happy. Well, it has nothing to do with bugging you. I'm just really happy coz something special arrived in the mail today. Well, I'm not helpi'' you inflate it. No, listen to this. Listen to this. "dear friend..." "this letter comes to you from someone "who wants to pass on the good fortune they received from it. "all you have to do is send it off, without changing any of the text, "to 10 friends within 24 hours "then great things will happen to you"! Harold, you know what this is? This is a chain letter, harold. This is all baloney. Chain letters are right up there with horoscopes, palm readers and extended warranties. No, it says if I don't return it, terrible things will happen to me. You know, harold, in my life I've received, I dunno, hundreds of these darned chain letters. I've never ever, ever sent one out, and look at me. It's time for the possum lodge word game! [ cheers and applause ] today's prize is from port asbestos video. Good for one rental of absolutely any madonna movie. The rental is free, but if you wanna bring it back, it'll cost you five bucks! All right, mike, cover your ears. Red, you've got 30 seconds to get mike to say this word. Yeah, all right, winston. And go! Okay, mike, every christmas your family gets together because it's... When they all get a day pass? No, okay, no, like my mother makes cranberry sauce every thanksgiving. There must be something that your mother does every year, and that's called a... Wedding? No, okay, okay, but your mother does that so often because it's one of society's... Legal loopholes. Okay, but carry on with the wedding thing. The bride wears a white dress because it's a... Naive groom! Uh, red, almost outta time. Okay, okay, mike, you know these ceos that make their big money grab, and they head up off to the grand cayman, okay, that's because for them it's a... It's a criminal's paradise. How do you figure that? No extradition treaty! I heard it! I heard it! Welcome to the experts portion of the programme where we address those three little words that men find so hard to say... Audience: I don't know! Okay, here's the letter... "dear experts, my question is, "should I heat my house with gas or electricity? "now that the nights are getting cooler, "what's better for sleeping, oh, no no no. Electric blankets scare me. Well, they're okay, unless they get wet. You know, in prison they keep the temperature at 70° fahrenheit. All day, every day. It's kinda like california. Except with no beaches or palm trees. Or movie stars. Oh you'd be surprised. Plus in prison you had more options. You had gas, electric or lethal injection. I don't think the guy wants to sleep that long. Personally, I'd recommend the furnace over the electric blanket, because they have these programmable thermostats now that can be set to be constantly adjusting the temperature in the house. Oh yeah, around here they're called husbands. There is another option! You know, back in the 70s there was this rock 'n' roll group, and they were called three dog night. You got any idea where they got that name from? A frat party? No, no, from australia. Coz sometimes they sleep with dogs. Sure sounds like a frat party. You know what, forget about gas, forget about electricity, the cheapest way to stay warm is just to wear more clothes to bed. Yeah, okay, but what about when you wanna... What? You know... You know! Oh, I know I know, I'm just not sure up know. I'm talkin' about ngggg.... I'm talkin' about if you wanna do something... But you have all those clothes on... Well, you just keep your slippers near the edge of the bed, and don't take the flap down 'till you get there. [ laughter and applause ] a lot of people have these central vac units in their homes, but I got to thinkin', you know, something this good shouldn't be wasted on house cleaning. My mind takes me back to when I was a kid there, used to go down to the big eaton store in toronto, and they had vacuum tubes there for taking messages from one area to another. Like maybe checkin' on the price of something or gettin' you your bill. Or tellin' the manager there was a 9-year-old kid in a flannel shirt trying to steal fishin' lures. So this time on handyman corner, I'm gonna show you how to turn your central vac into an in-house, two-way message delivery system. First thing you wanna do is re-wire the receptacle so that it's controlled by this wall switch. Like this... [ vacuum whirring ] so that's where they go! Next you need a coupla mailboxes. You can actually get these cheap, as long as it's dark and you've got a strong bumper. These are going to become our message centres. To hook the unit up to the central vac system, you need some pvc pipe, and a coupla elbows, and then that way anything that's travelling through the system will be deflected into the mail box. Now, sending messages, well, that's a little trickier. Coz you need something that will funnel everything into the pipe. I'm actually gonna use pieces off these highway safety cones. You can get these while you're getting the mail boxes. You need to get two of these units so that you and your wife can each have one, see, and then wherever you are in the house, you just plug it into the nearest central vac outlet. The only other detail is controlling the air flow. See, I punched a hole in the side of the mail box. And in the "receive" position, the hole is covered by this plug that we took out of our bath tub. It means bernice and I can only take showers now, but that's fine. I mean, the two of us having a bath together looks like a manatee exhibit at marineland. Right now I wanna send bernice a message. So what I do is move my dispatch arm into the send position. That moves the bathtub plug away from the hole, and allows air to flow into the system. Coz air is kinda like a married man, it'll always take the path of least resistance. Okay, bernice is upstairs in the house somewhere. I'm just gonna send her this little message. Now I just swing the arm into the "receive" position. [ chuckling ] there we go. Wonder what she said? [ applause ] I think I figured out the exact moment men started to go horribly off-track. It wasn't the first superbowl or a village people concert or when they introduced bottomless drinks at the topless bar. It was the day somebody invented automatic transmission. That changed us forever. Suddenly, driving a car was easy. That's a bad thing. Men only like two things to be easy... Exams and women. And we don't study for either one of them. Driving needs to be difficult. Coz if a man is doin' something that doesn't take both hands and both feet, his mind will wander, and it doesn't stop and ask for directions. And if you ask me, women would prefer to date a guy who has standard transmission. Coz if he's a young man you know he's gotta keep his hands to himself, and if he's an old guy, there's less chance that his leg will fall asleep. So the next time you buy a car, get one with a clutch and a gear shift. Let's get back to the days when our careers are moving forward and our cars were stalling, rather than the other way around. Remember, I'm pullin' for ya; we're all in this together. [ applause ] even if you've been living a three-ply lifestyle on a two-ply budget, don't skimp on your septic maintenance. That one place you don't wanna be over our head. Well, I got a chain letter from harold, which is not a big surprise. But hey, wait a minute, what's this? A chain letter from winston. Huh? I am having a special kind of day, aren't I? Hey, red, what are you doing? You don't throw chain letters in the garbage! You know what, you're right. You know, I expected a chain letter from harold, but not from you, winston. Red, you're supposed to send chain letters to 10 people you know. In a town this size, you're bound to get some overlap. Yeah, well, you know, winston, I don't mind you getting involved in this chain letter thing. Oh, I sense a big 'but' comin' here. You're right. chuckling well, I was hopin' I'd find you two here. I've got a little chain letter here from yours truly to each of you. Dalton, isn't the stamp cheaper than you driving all the way over here? Yeah, but it's not as fast. You know what, it's not always about money, red. You know, red's totally against this chain letter thing, eh? He feels that people should give up all hope of ever trying to improve their situation. Well, every year I look at the fortune 500 list, and I never see anybody on there who made it by sending out chain letters. Well, that's the way I felt, but look what happened to harold! Nothing happened to harold, he's always been like that. No, no no. The letter. The chain letter! Huh? He sent it out like they told him to, and the next he got a $100 bill in the mail. A hundred dollars! For nothing. Just like that! A hundred dollars! I got letters to deliver, I'll see you later. Yeah, me too! Red: We were trying to get little irrigation going out behind the lodge. Pretty dry back there and -- heheheh... Sorry, walter, sorry, sorry. That was just an accident, it was an accident. So anyway -- okay, that wasn't. That was just -- that's just pure fun! And then -- now, the problem with that is now mike's trying to keep the box dry and so on, gettin' a little damp there, mike. But mike had got one of these underground sprinkler systems. That's a great thing. Meanwhile, they're trying to get this -- but why would they bother with the regular sprinkler on there? [ red chuckling ] sorry, guys, sorry! So we get the irrigation and mike coiled -- and knocked walter over. Okay, that's not my fault. The valve just -- I have no -- dunno what happened there. Guys, I think you're diggin' her a little deep. You only go down about six inches there. Boy, the ground is so hard. So I figure from here on out, we'll just, you know what we'll do, just kinda pile the grass over it. I didn't realise that they had actually buried quite a bit of the pipe way down there. But I had done my part, and I figured why not just relax for a minute? And mike and walter were gonna just go and give it a try. Try the new sprinkler system and see how she worked. So they turn her on and they're lookin' for the little heads to pop out, but there's nothin' happening. They can't quite figure out what's going on. But you could hear there was water running somewhere. And I'm starting to get a -- I'm dreaming I'm on the titanic at this point. And they're lookin' around trying to feel what's going on. Still got a problem. They down real close there, and all of a sudden there they get the one head to pop up, but it's just -- that's not -- there's where the water is! She's caught in some kind of a -- boy, a kind of a jelly thing there. So walter decides to just nail that with the axe, just relieve the pressure, and here comes the water. And guess who got it all! As connie francis would say... Who's sorry now? [ applause ] you know what really frenches my fries? Borrowing someone's car and then finding out it doesn't eve have power steering! I mean, driving's supposed to be pleasant and relaxing. If I wanted a workout, I'd -- well, I wouldn't want a workout. But don't panic. There's always a better way. Get yourself one of these heavy duty steering wheel covers here. Make it an extra large. You can get these off a bus while the driver's in the men's room. We're gonna slip that over the steering wheel itself, but you need it extra big coz we're gonna power it with this cordless drill. Okay, the key here is the ratio between the diameter of the steering wheel and the size of the pulley that's going into the chuck of the drill. I figure 500 to 1 is the correct ratio. So if the steering wheel is 17 inches, all we have to do is divide that by 500... You know, mathematical formulas might be fine for some people, but I prefer trial and error. Even though sometimes it leads to trial by fire. And occasionally trial by jury. All I did was try a bunch of different things and stuck 'em into the chuck of the drill. For example, tried a baby carriage wheel... Too big. Went with a screw nail... Too small. What I am going with is a gherkin pickle. This baby works like a charm. Check this out. What's that you say? What if I wanna turn the other way? Well, hey, this is a reversing drill. [ applause ] well, the whole lodge is really getting behind this chain letter thing. This is the incoming pile. Not too excited about that. It's the letters going out that we're focussing on. Get the lead outta there, dalton, eh, I'm tryin' to make the 5 o'clock mail pick-up. And rather than pitch in, you've chosen to use harsh words? Well, where am I, at home? Winston: Yeah, c'mon, red, help out here. I've got so much glue on my t-t-tongue I can't even... Talk? More chain letters! Where should I put them? Garbage can. Oh, it's under the pile. Oh. I owe you guys an apology. I should never have dragged you into this stupid chain letter. Oh, don't be cute, harold. We all know about your little windfall. Oh, that. Well, I took some bean-o, I think it pretty much took care -- no, no, no. No, no, no, the m-m-m -- money you got in the m-mm-- mail. I didn't get any money in the mail. The $100 bill, harold. I didn't get a hundred -- I didn't get $100 bill, I got a bill for $100! Overdue library books. I hope you're not gonna ask us for the money. No! I always expect something like this, so I always put a little bit of money away each week in my cashbox. Oh boy. Uh-oh. Okay, we better go. Uncle red! Yes, harold? Do you have an explanation I'm expected to believe? Yes, yes, I do, harold. You know, how you started the whole chain letter thing, which I believe introduced the concept of getting something for nothing. And that was just a slippery slope for us taking money outta your cash box to cover our costs here. So in a way, this is your fault. Okay, okay, don't worry about it. I'll pay you back. I'll pay you back. In cash?! Well, cash is government currency, right? Yes, it is! Heheheh, so are stamps! [ possum squealing ] meeting time. Meeting time. Away you go. I think we're even. So if my wife is watching, I'll be coming straight home after the meeting. I had a little lesson today, namely that you don't need a chain letter to get lucky, but again that's you're call. And to the rest of you, thanks for watching. On behalf of myself and harold and the whole gang up here at possum lodge, keep your stick on the ice. [ cheers and applause ] sit down, have a seat. Meeting's coming to order, sit down. Sit down. Everybody sit down. All rise! Quando omni flunkus moritati. Red: Sit down. Bow your heads for the mans's prayer. I'm a man, but I can change, if I have to... I guess. All right, men, this whole chain letter fiasco has pointed out that we have a real small gene pool in our area. And we gotta warn the young people that if your girlfriend looks like you, there's a pretty good chance that you're each giving the same gift to the same guy on father's day. [ ♪ ]